From The Metro:
Young mum Charlie Wilcox has claimed the 3,500 roll-up cigarettes she smoked while expecting her first child were good for the baby.
The 20-year-old said cutting the amount of oxygen reaching unborn Lilly would cause her heart to work harder, making her stronger. She also said smoking was a ‘mother’s right’ and claimed a friend miscarried because she quit the habit.
She said: ‘Where’s the proof that it’s so bad to smoke? I don’t believe it was hurting Lilly. On a typical day when I was pregnant, I would smoke a fag every 45 minutes.’ Giving up suddenly during the pregnancy would put the baby under more stress, she added.
Miss Wilcox, of Rainham, Kent, made the claims on the BBC3 documentary Misbehaving Mums To Be, ignoring midwives who told her smoking could cause premature birth, low birth weight or other health problems. Specialist Lisa Fendall warned her: ‘Your baby is struggling for oxygen, and is saying “help me”.’
Lilly, now 14 weeks old, was born weighing 2.7kg (6lb 2oz) – beneath the British average of 3.3kg (7lb 4oz) for a newborn girl, and ten days early.
Unemployed Miss Wilcox’s levels of carbon monoxide were six times higher than the level considered safe for the baby while she was pregnant. Lilly’s father Shane Baker, 20, said: ‘Unless you’re in the situation yourself then you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.’
Charlie and Shane, we salute you, and congrat's for little baby girl.
That didn't take long
30 minutes ago
13 comments:
Hmmm - not sure, Mark. Yes to the govt keeping TF out of it - yes but not sure there's no damage.
Well, at least she now has a means of supporting her habit. Child benefit and Child Tax Credits, in addition to any other benefits which may being claimed, will soon be gushing forth from the taxpayers' teat.
Well, somebody's got to be below average. I'm not advocating such heavy smoking, but there isn't actually much evidence that light smoking during pregnancy does much harm.
I hate smoking. I really really hate it. I hate the stink at the time. I hate the stink it leaves in my clothes. I hate how it makes peoples face go all baggy and horrid. I hate my children doing it.
But, it is your life and you can do what you want as long as you don't do it round me.
Oh, and I quite like the scent of a mild cigar on the air, but I would never smoke one.
Personally I get off on 5 Star. Now that was a great smell. All that lovely lead ethyl and other anti-knock additives.
(Just for the avoidance of doubt I have had had asthma and hay fever etc since I was about 2 and smokers smoke buggers me up - but cars don't!!)
Nice dilemma. It's the defiance I approve of rather than smoking during pregnancy, but that's none of my business anyway.
I'm surprised the baby didn't die because of her smoking. Second hand smoking is a killer so we're told.
JH, Anon. AKH, JQ, in this case there was no damage, sorted. Maybe she was lucky; maybe humans are far, far more resistant to smoke that The Righteous would have us believe?
L, wot? The smell of 5 Star? Each to his own!
FT, what does her employment status have to do with anything? Would your response be different if she were a stay-at-home mum? Why do you assume that her partner isn't working?
I'm hearing you, and of course I don't have the right to make the assumption about her partner. But I do, on the basis that it's a state of affairs I come across regularly and there's a depressing monotony about it.
Also, everything I said above is true, whether or not the partner is working - Child Benefit, Tax credits, Jobseeker's Allowance and highly likely, Income Support and Housing Benefit. Perhaps these latter two are a bit of a big assumption but again, it would hardly be unusual. The burden of proof is with her rather than me, I feel, since it was she who decided she was able to commit to raising a child.
And the ability to take on the responsibilities of parenthood run wider than whether she decided to smoke defiantly or not.
Lastly, I cite the report by Warwick University which suggests that Child Benefit is largely spent on makeup, vodka and tobacco. Depressing, I know. And this woman may be a saint. But.... I hope it works for them, or mostly, for the child. I don't actually care all that much whether she smokes or not, but I do think it would be nice not to have another 6 or 8 median-wage taxpayers condemned to going to work to support her.
FT, yes, the whole cash welfare system needs reforming and simplifying, but the cost of this (with or without reform) is but a fraction of the cash or social cost of the quangocracy, the corporatist sector, the Home-Owner-Ist sector or the banking sector.
It might well take one median wage earner to support her, but it takes six median wage earners to support a Town Hall Chief, and sixty median wage earners to support one banker, and it's not like the Homeys are chipping in their fair share.
Fair point. Truth is, I haven't yet been able to decouple my "instinctive" response completely from a more logical response - even after tears of what I'm pleased to call "thinking" about it.
I understand all to well that the benefits system is up a gumtree and that everyone with an index-inked public sector pay / pension scheme is going to be funded to a greater or lesser extent by taxpayers who'll be substantially worse off than they; I also understand that it's no good just ignoring babies (who didn't ask to be borne) and leaving them in poverty and deprivation.
The Citizen's Dividend would be an ideal and much fairer way of doing all this but in reality, there's no chance it's going to happen anytime soon.
I think what I stumble over the most is the attitude of people for whom pregnancy isn't a matter of forethought and planning, it's just something they can do because "the guvvermunt will provide". Not blind either to being caught in another generalisation about this young girl, which may be wholly unwarranted.
Oh hell. Maybe it'd be easier to be a socialist and just assume the guvvermunt pays for everything with a magic money tree. At least socialists don't need to think.
FT, yes, it is clearly the case that single, unemployed women get such generous extra benefits when they have a couple of kids (about £150 a week extra, from memory) that the whole thing is completely distorted.
With a flat rate CI as proposed by me and a thousand others, the extra they get would be only £70 a week for two kids, and there'd be no couple penalty of up to £200 a week.
The problem with the likes of Ms Wilcox not having children, is that it would aggravate the current situation where fewer and fewer workers support more and more pensioners. Of course, gold-plated index linked pensions make this worse, but tinkering with them isn't going to alter the demographics of it.
Mark, I think you could afford to be more generous with the Child CI. I think the "baby-farming" that you mention is a much smaller phenomenon than the Daily Mail would have us believe (nor do I beleive Warwick University - most of these so-called "studies" set out to prove a particular point than research a phenomenon) and would certainly be much smaller still once the poor but industrious are able to escape the benefit trap. Remember, no employer in his right mind wants to employ someone who has been forced to work - they're worse than useless.
B, the rate of Child CI I suggested is just the sum total of [Child Benefit + Child Tax Credits] averaged out between all children, so some people would get less than now and some would get more. Baby farming is an issue, whether it's 1% of all kids or 10% or even 25% is a separate issue.
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